CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cordacontract
Quark Soup
Quark Soup

Reputation: 4736

Are Corda Contracts Legally Binding?

I have a client that wants to put contracts on a Distributed Ledger and have both parties sign them electronically. I’m pretty familiar with PKI and Certificate Authorities, but I don’t see the connection to Corda contracts. Suppose we want a consumer, John Smith, to sign a binding agreement, like an IOU or a repayment agreement in a Corda Ledger. First, where does John get his key pair? Second, how to we take John to a real-life court if he doesn’t agree with the terms of the contract?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 260

Answers (1)

Cais Manai
Cais Manai

Reputation: 966

Corda networks are permissioned with strong identities being a key feature.

This means each party on a Corda network is transacting with another verifiable party; this is as opposed to say Bitcoin or other public networks where parties can remain completely anonymous.

Each Corda network has access controlled to it by a 'doorman'. The doorman essentially enforces rules regarding the information that nodes must provide in order to be admitted to the network. For example, a doorman could impose that a full suite of KYC checks, such as those carried out by banks need be carried out before admission.

Answering your two questions specifically

where does John get his key pair?

John would create his own keypair and upon satisfying the doorman, a signed node certificate is created for the keypair signed with the doorman CA key. This node certificate is then used to issue the TLS certificate. This certifies the node's identity when communicating with other participants on the network You can read more about Network Permissioning here

how do we take John to a real-life court if he doesn’t agree with the terms of the contract

Smart contracts within Corda refer to a legal prose document that can be referred back to within the traditional legal system in the case of legal disputes.

Upvotes: 2

Related Questions